The refueling of automobiles, trucks, SUVs and other vehicles is a relatively rudimentary task, in that the driver merely drives into the nearest service station and refuels his/her vehicle. Even on long distance travels, it is relatively easy to find service stations on interstate highways and in towns or cities near the highways.
On the other hand, there are other vehicles where refueling is more difficult. For example, owners of boats and personal water craft may find it more difficult to find marinas or other facilities for refueling. In addition, many owners of boats and water craft often find that it is more cost effective to purchase automobile fuel at a service station and transport the fuel to the boat or water craft. Indeed, many boat owners use the standard five gallon plastic containers to carry gasoline from a service station to the boat. Often, three or four five-gallon containers are taken to the service station in a vehicle, filled with gas, and transported back to the boat for refueling. This works satisfactory, but it is often cumbersome to carry the five-gallon containers to the boat or other water craft, and manipulate each container to pour the contents thereof into the boat. The procedure is even more troublesome if the boat is in the water and is unstable and rocking due to wave action. This awkward situation can be readily visualized, as a person standing on the unstable boat and trying to keep the gas container oriented so as to pour the gas into the refill receptacle, occurs all to frequently.
There are commercially available gas caddys which are essentially twenty-eight gallon containers mounted on wheels. While this makes the transport of the fuel convenient, it does not allow the user to easily fill the container at a service station, and transport the container to the site of the vehicle to be refueled. The reason for this is that when the twenty-eight gallon container is placed in a vehicle and taken to the service station to be refueled, the full container cannot be easily unloaded from the vehicle and wheeled to the location of the vehicle to be refueled. This can be appreciated, as a twenty eight gallons of gasoline weighs in the neighborhood of one hundred and seventy pounds.
A similar situation occurs when refueling other vehicles that are driven be internal combustion engines. The troublesome refueling of other vehicles includes, lawn mowers, both of the self-propelled and riding type, garden tractors, chain saws, motorcycles, other sports vehicles, and even airplanes.
The burden of carrying other liquids from one location to another encompasses the same problems described above. Water, for example, is often carried in a container from a well or other water source to water animals or to water plants, trees or a garden. The person cannot normally carry more than two five gallon buckets at a time, or for a very long distance, before having to dispense the water or stop and rest. There are also many industrial situations in which liquids are required to be carried from one location to another by a person.
From the foregoing, it can be seen that a need exists for a method of transporting and refueling boats, other vehicles and fuel-powered machines. A need exists for a fixture for holding a container of fuel, and allowing the container to be rotated by the user to pour the contents of the fuel into the boat without the user having to hold or otherwise support the weight of the fuel container during the refueling process. Another need exists for a fixture that is constructed so that the pivot of the container is such that if released by the user, the fuel container returns to its upright position to eliminate spillage of the fuel.
Another need exists for a wheeled cart adapted for holding a liquid container for transport from one location to another, and to easily dispense the liquid while the container remains attached to the wheeled cart. Another need exists for allowing attachment and detachment of the container to the wheeled cart, and for rearrangement of the containers on the wheeled cart for dispensing the liquid from a full container attached at an elevated position in the wheeled cart.
Yet another need exists for a fixture for securing thereto a liquid container, and for allowing easy tilting of the container in the fixture to dispense the liquid from the container.